A journey of exploration of virtual worlds and digital social networks such as Second Life, Flickr, and Facebook was made. A group in Flickr named “The Other You” was created, to observe the identities that users assumed and found the range of personas and image obsessed avatars that inhabited Second Life.

 

Throughout this process, a beta version of incorporating voice into Second Life became available. This re-assured the notion of allowing senses to be incorporated into virtual environments, the significance of voice (spoken word) in our communication. It also made a statement against text based communication. The idea of challenging the notion of the avatar was born. These challenges went through developing ideas of extracting the form of the avatar from the screen and bring it into real life and also projecting it on a mirrored surface in public places. It was decided that it was going to be challenged through what your voice can look like. This then took the project into different direction and opened another unknown territory: sound.

 

screenshot of profile created in Facebook

 

screenshot of Flickr Group that explored avatar images

 

(PARENTHESIS)

The results of researching the history of visualizing sound, production of voice, resulted in taking into account the initial inventions for recording voice such as the gramophone and phonoautograph. This led to study what spoken word means and how psychologically it reflects the individual. Tisseron (2002) refers to spoken word being associated with the warm atmosphere of family, specifically the mother figure that makes an initial connection with a person when learning how to speak, but also physical relationships to the mouth and ears. He also points out that writing on the Internet is a form of communication with one self as much as with others, as it is a search of ones own ideas and emotions.

 

The conclusion drawn was that the main issue the project was looking at was one of identity and the extension or projection of self. Therefore, it was decided to take the notion of the avatar to the next level, stepping away from the figurative and going into the abstract. However, it was important to be loyal to the definition of avatar. The thesaurus defines it as “an incarnation, embodiment, or manifestation of a person or an idea”

 

With this in mind, the next answer to pursue was: How does a voice look like?